James Duncan: The Acropolis Museum

The top floor of the Acropolis Museum housing artifacts from the Parthenon

The Acropolis Museum (Μουσείο Ακρόπολης) in Athens was designed by architect Bernard Tschumi to serve as a modern home for ancient artifacts from the Acropolis in Athens. The highlight of the collection are portions of the Ionic frieze, the metopes, and the pediments of the Parthenon, housed on the top floor of the building. With the facilities provided by the new museum, many in Greece hope to secure the repatriation of Parthenon artifacts from the British Museum and elsewhere.

Visitors view original and reproduced sections of the Parthenon’s frieze

Sited on the side of the Acropolis, the orientation of the museum matches that of the Parthenon. As you walk around the top floor, you can look up at the top of the Acropolis and see how the frieze sections, metopes, and pediment sculptures on display were originally sited on the building.

View of the top of the Acropolis from the Acropolis Museum

Original sections of the Parthenon’s frieze on display at the Acropolis Museum

The flanks of the Acropolis has been inhabited for so long and rebuilt so many times that you can’t put a new building in without hitting ancient artifacts. The Acropolis Museum embraces this fact by floating over the recovered ruins it’s built on top of. The floor of the first floor of the museum opens up, both inside and out, and upper floors contain transparent areas which provide a view of the ruins below. The sense of dimensionality this gives the building is remarkable.

Recovered ruins underneath the Acropolis Museum

Transparent floors in the Acropolis Museum connect the levels

The only negative thing I can say about the museum is that they don’t allow photography in most of the gallery spaces, including the magnificent second floor gallery of human sculptures and the original Caryatids from the Erechtheion. Of course, the Acropolis Museum isn’t the alone in this ban—but standing on my soapbox—I still find it puzzling and even infuriating. The artifacts are a part of history and belong to all of humanity. While conservation demands minimizing impact from potentially harmful light sources and there are safety reasons to ban tripods when the spaces are open general public, I can’t see how banning available light photography with handheld cameras is anything more than sad attempt to implement copyright over humanity’s cultural history and prevent the making of derivative creative works.

But, that’s just my opinion as a grumpy photographer/creative wonk. The museum—both in its design as well as its exhibits—is phenomenal and I really do look forward to going back again.

Posted by James Duncan Davidson.